Jelbring, Gunilla

Abstract [en]

Abstract

My purpose with this study was to learn more about different ways to teach children how to read and to investigate how teachers can use more fiction when they teach.

During the years that I have been working in school, I have only met teachers who use a method that is built on sounds. The children learns to read from books where the words is not put in their right purpose; for example; we can se a sun, a dear looks down in a lake.

After my teacher-education in literature I became more and more interested in if it could be possible to use more fiction when you teach children how to read. I also wondered if it was possible to find readers where the sentences are put in a meaningful story.

I heard of a method called Whole Language, or the kiwi-method and I decided to find out more about that method. I decided to make a comparison between the “sound-method” and the Whole Language-method.

I have been using qualitative interviews with both children and teachers with experience from these different ways of teaching. The interviews with the children had been very instructive for me. In my results I have became to discover that the children who had been taught by the Whole language-method where more positive about reading. Concurrently I do not think that we can reject the older way to teach children how to read. I think that you can take parts even from this method and put different methods together in your own way. The most important for the children is that their teacher is satisfied with his/hers way of teaching.